À la loupe

You who will recognize yourself, I wish you the strength to preserve that angelic beauty of flesh and bone, that modesty in the face of terror, that restraint in the face of carelessness.

Contemporary art is now. Now is war. And I know that you who once saw me pass will not hold it against me if I say: it is war.

You who smiled or grumbled at my earlier artworks, you know that if I write here “it’s war”, it is an attempt to act as if we were realizing it together, today, in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette or eating a vegan steak with very spicy sauce and lemon, telling ourselves: “fuck, it’s war.”

You know very well, you who have made it this far, that we say “it’s war” for the first and last time. Now, we are preparing for a peace economy.

We discipline ourselves. We wage war on ourselves to go where we must go, in peace. We control our jaws, our stiffness in the face of the unfamiliar, our bites aimed at imaginary enemies in our nerves, drawing blood from our impulses.

Workers in art have fought for a long time to try to play fair, to master language, the instrument, the presence of others in the form of an audience, an audience without mercy, since it is us. Us, when we attend an event in our cities, on sidewalks, by the train stations, or in alleyways where we dance, sing, or laugh, with objects or without objects, in big-box stores or on a small screen. A meta-story as old as the world, where we replay peace and war, and where, once the game is over, the encounter continues at the bar.

The peace economy seeks escape, flight, and then a maquis where everything can be said. A social flight simulator called art: the convention that accepts that one individual, or a small number of individuals, alone facing the mass, can represent us all. Because trust has been built, because beauty and honesty have found their consent, this presence draws two tears from a smile and gives us back the energy to set off once again.

We are looking for the right words. We walk around the neighborhood to make up numbers. We don’t know how or with whom, but we learn quickly. Through simple conversations, with lowered thresholds of tolerance, we will cross the threshold to create the institutions of the future.

If today we want peace, it is because all of us are dreamers. It is so improbable: overeducated male primates want to prepare it so badly that it ends up happening. So, if what we want seems impossible and yet we still launch it, if it holds only in our poor little ember, then perhaps it is art, a vibration that is neither nature nor culture, but what remains of energy at the very principle of our vital force.

In the meantime, we must endure. And seek, for those who will recognize themselves, a place where, body to body, we reflect on what we are going to eat, collectively and individually, where we are going to live, and how to keep control over the coming day.

We can create an artistic offer relying only on ourselves. We take turns providing a presence, a welcome where children hear the first words of a story that we ourselves have woven. A story that conveys values other than strength, money, accumulation, physical beauty, or the advertising norm where the other is a follower, and I am the winner.

I would need several lifetimes to name the number of nuances we could welcome, simply because, at one point in the city, we take turns ensuring that the flame does not go out.

Let’s be pragmatic: if school and society tell us that everything they do is for our own good, to offer us a beautiful life full of responsibilities and rights, then I imagine that such a life will always be more beautiful in times of peace than in times of war.

Anyhow… Hooray!

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